My First Blind Date

I got an email the other day (actually the day after I wrote the venus-pluto post). It was a friend request from someone I didn't know. Or rather, as it turns out, someone I knew for about 5 minutes my freshman year of high school. He found our mutual friend on facebook, and recognized my name. Since I knew only two people from his town, I eventually figured out that he was the really cute, smart, rich kid my friend set me up with when I was 14! We had gone out once and then never spoken again. Needless to say this was a bit of a surprise, since I barely remembered anything about him. It is so venus-pluto for an old flame to show up out of nowhere, so it got my attention. The funny thing was, I told him what I remembered most about our (largely chaperoned!) movie date, was that I despised the coat I was wearing because I was sure it made me look poor. (I didn't tell him why I hated it, just that I was preoccupied the whole night about the fact that I did.) That tan coat...my god. To this day I gag. Anyway he thought it was hysterical that I remembered that, as only a girl would. In my mind then, the reason he didn't call me was because he knew I was embarrassingly poor. In my mind now, I can see that we were awkward 14 year olds with not much to talk about, and thoroughly bent out of shape with nerves. I mean, I am in my 30s now and blind dates are still harrowing! The thing is, it just really struck me that both today and twenty years ago, I am so preoccupied with money on dates. I am never comfortable with the power dynamics introduced by disparities in income and gender expectations around money. It drives me nuts. But to think that one of my very first dates was probably ruined because if this preoccupation...wow. Venus-pluto opposition, you take today's prize for screwing up my love life!

On the bright side, it was really nice to hear from him. It was sweet that he just told me that he had a name for me: 'the cooking girl'. He said it's because he thought I was so hot, and you know, it gets hot in the kitchen. ;) Nice to hear it had nothing to do with money after all, after 20 years!